Grande dame: Elsa Zylberstein portrays Simone Veil in her later years. Photo / Supplied
Grande dame: Elsa Zylberstein portrays Simone Veil in her later years. Photo / Supplied
Most New Zealanders won’t be familiar with French politician Simone Veil, who became the first female president of the European Parliament in 1979, but Veil’s incredible life and legacy make for a fascinating biopic.
Born Simone Jacob into a middle-class, Jewish family in 1927, the young girl was a voraciousreader and fighter of injustices even before the Holocaust tore the Jacob family apart and gave her a lifetime of nightmares and panic attacks. She went on to become a magistrate, health minister and a revered champion of women’s rights. As with director Olivier Dahan’s previous paeans to great women – La Vie En Rose about Edith Piaf and Grace of Monaco about Grace Kelly – there is nothing subtle about the storytelling in Simone. The narrative leaps back and forth through Veil’s tragedy-filled life, which can be confusing – characters are dead one minute, alive the next – from rather on-the-nose childhood predictions: “She commands everyone – she’ll end up being unbearable!” to scenes of politicians bellowing down the camera lens about abortion, to gruelling depictions of concentration camps.
But while La Vie En Rose won Oscars and Grace of Monaco earned derision, it’s the extraordinary successes and the powerful personality honoured in Simone that elevate this film from messy melodrama to engrossing biography.
Thankfully, we have two excellent adult Simones to guide us through the tangled timeline – a beguiling Rebecca Marder as the 1940s teen, and a prosthetic-assisted Elsa Zylberstein (I’ve Loved You So Long) who portrays Simone in later life as the grande dame of political change. They are supported by a solid cast, which helps us ignore the occasionally ham-fisted dialogue, in which characters over-explain things. But no one can dispute the importance of the issues that Veil fought, nor the vehemence of feeling. This French femme makes an inspirational figure for every woman the world over.
Simone: Woman of the Century, directed by Olivier Dahan, is in cinemas now.
